Timothy Birdnow

So the Secret Service is investigating actor John Schneider for saying Joe Biden should be publicly executed. Note; he did NOT say assassinated but executed. World of difference.

His exact words:

"Mr. President, I believe you are guilty of treason and should be publicly hung. Your son too. Your response is..?"

(The word actually is hanged, not hung. A picture is hung a person is hanged.)

That seems rather tame to me and hardly a threat, but the Secret Service is obliated to look into it regardless.

Schneider defended his statemtnt:

"It’s my position, which I am entitled to have, that some of our nations leaders in Washington have lost their way, and corruption runs rampant, both on our nation’s borders and abroad," he claimed, according to Deadline. "Transparency and accountability must happen in order for our constitutional republic to survive."

This certainly is far less of a threat than what commedian Kathy Griffin did with a fake Donald Trump's severed, bloody head, for instance.

Griffin complained she was "targeted" by Mr. Trump and his "goons" in the Secret Service at the time:

"After the release of the photo in May 2017, in which Griffin holds a bloodied, severed effigy head of Trump, Griffin was investigated by the Secret Service. Nearly two months later, she announced, she had been cleared. But she maintains the investigation's scope was unnecessary –- and that the White House was responsible.

On ABC's "Start Here" podcast, host Brad Mielke asked Griffin if she thought the president personally ordered her to be targeted.

"Of course," she said. "You know how he works."

She did not provide any evidence to support her claim. But, Griffin said, "You know, he has a vendetta against certain people."'

End excerpt.

Griffin had a number of defenders after this hateful incident (an incident she said she regretted but later repeated.) Some of those who defended Griffin were Jim Carey, Ricky Gervais, then Senator Al Franken, Larry King, and others.

I wonder what old Kathy has to say about this incident? Or any of the rest of these creepy crackers, for that matter.

I think the actions of the secret service may be a bit overboard but it is proper to at least investigate a possible threat to the President. I also think any reasonable person would conclude Schneider is guilty of nothing but free speech and a careless anger (his wife had just died and he probably didn't have control of himself, wasn't thinking too clearly.)

But we have come to expect this uneven-handed approach and this unwillingness to allow free speech in any capacity. You can SAY anything you want about the President. It's when your words threaten to become action that there is a problem.

Watch as this becomes a creeping standard and anyone and everyone who says anything even remotely threatening meets with this same treatment.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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